Encoding optimization for quantum machine learning demonstrated on a superconducting transmon qutrit
Shuxiang Cao, Weixi Zhang, Jules Tilly, Abhishek Agarwal, Mustafa S. Bakr, Giulio Campanaro, Simone D Fasciati, James Wills, Boris Shteynas, Vivek Chidambaram, Peter Leek, Ivan Rungger
Abstract A qutrit represents a three-level quantum system, so that one qutrit can encode more information than a qubit, which corresponds to a two-level quantum system. This work investigates the potential of qutrit circuits in machine learning classification applications. We propose and evaluate different data-encoding schemes for qutrits, and find that the classification accuracy varies significantly depending on the used encoding. We therefore propose a training method for encoding optimization that allows to consistently achieve high classification accuracy, and show that it can also improve the performance within a data re-uploading approach. Our theoretical analysis and numerical simulations indicate that the qutrit classifier can achieve high classification accuracy using fewer components than a comparable qubit system. We showcase the qutrit classification using the encoding optimization method on a superconducting transmon qutrit, demonstrating the practicality of the proposed method on noisy hardware. Our work demonstrates high-precision ternary classification using fewer circuit elements, establishing qutrit quantum circuits as a viable and efficient tool for quantum machine learning applications.
Abstract A qutrit represents a three-level quantum system, so that one qutrit can encode more information than a qubit, which corresponds to a two-level quantum system. This work investigates the potential of qutrit circuits in machine learning classification applications. We propose and evaluate different data-encoding schemes for qutrits, and find that the classification accuracy varies significantly depending on the used encoding. We therefore propose a training method for encoding optimization that allows to consistently achieve high classification accuracy, and show that it can also improve the performance within a data re-uploading approach. Our theoretical analysis and numerical simulations indicate that the qutrit classifier can achieve high classification accuracy using fewer components than a comparable qubit system. We showcase the qutrit classification using the encoding optimization method on a superconducting transmon qutrit, demonstrating the practicality of the proposed method on noisy hardware. Our work demonstrates high-precision ternary classification using fewer circuit elements, establishing qutrit quantum circuits as a viable and efficient tool for quantum machine learning applications.
Abstract Quantum machine learning integrates quantum computing with classical machine learning techniques to enhance computational power and efficiency. A major challenge in Quantum machine learning is developing robust quantum classifiers capable of accurately processing and classifying complex datasets. In this work, we present an advanced approach leveraging data re-uploading, a strategy that cyclically encodes classical data into quantum states to improve classifier performance. We examine two cost functions—fidelity and trace distance—across various quantum classifier configurations, including single-qubit, two-qubit, and entangled two-qubit systems. Additionally, we evaluate four optimization techniques (L-BFGS-B, COBYLA, Nelder-Mead, and SLSQP) to determine their effectiveness in optimizing quantum circuits for both linear and non-linear classification tasks. Our results show that the choice of optimization method significantly impacts classifier performance, with L-BFGS-B and COBYLA often yielding superior accuracy. The two-qubit entangled classifier shows improved accuracy over its non-entangled counterpart, albeit with increased computational cost. Also, the two-qubit entangled classifier are the best option for real word random dataset in order to accuracy and computational cost. Linear classification tasks generally exhibit more stable performance across optimization techniques compared to non-linear tasks. Our findings highlight the potential of data re-uploading in Quantum machine learning outperforming existing quantum classifier models in terms of accuracy and robustness. This work contributes to the growing field of Quantum machine learning by providing a comprehensive comparison of classification strategies and optimization techniques in quantum computing environments, offering a foundation for developing more efficient and accurate quantum classifiers.
Abstract Quantum two-level systems, i.e., qubits, form the basis for most quantum machine learning approaches that have been proposed throughout the years. However, higher dimensional quantum systems constitute a promising alternative and are increasingly explored in theory and practice. Here, we explore the capabilities of multi-level quantum systems, so-called qudits, for their use in a quantum machine learning context. We formulate classification and regression problems with the data re-uploading approach and demonstrate that a quantum circuit operating on a single qudit is able to successfully learn highly non-linear decision boundaries of classification problems such as the MNIST digit recognition problem. We demonstrate that the performance strongly depends on the relation between the qudit states representing the labels and the structure of labels in the training data set. Such a bias can lead to substantial performance improvement over qubit-based circuits in cases where the labels, the qudit states, and the operators employed to encode the data are well-aligned. Furthermore, we elucidate the influence of the choice of the elementary operators and show that a squeezing operator is necessary to achieve good performances. We also show that there exists a trade-off for qudit systems between the number of circuit-generating operators in each processing layer and the total number of layers needed to achieve a given accuracy. Finally, we compare classification results from numerically exact simulations and their equivalent implementation on actual IBM quantum hardware. The findings of our work support the notion that qudit-based algorithms exhibit attractive traits and constitute a promising route to increasing the computational capabilities of quantum machine learning approaches.
Abstract Hybrid quantum machine learning combines classical minimization with parameterized quantum circuits, enabling powerful learning models even on near-term quantum hardware. This work presents an evaluation of hybrid quantum machine learning classifiers using the data re-uploading framework across nine binary and multi-class classification tasks with varying geometric complexity. We compare three quantum circuit architectures, single-qubit, two-qubit, and two-qubit entangled, trained with three classical minimizers: COBYLA, Nelder-Mead, and SLSQP. Our experiments span training sizes from 1 to 200 samples and reveal that two-qubit classifiers, when paired with the SLSQP minimizer, achieve the highest overall test accuracy of 99.775% on structured tasks and strong performance (up to 89.78%) on complex multi-class pattern. Among minimizers, SLSQP consistently provides the best generalization, while entanglement improves accuracy in non-linear and fragmented tasks. By analyzing accuracy trends, generalization gaps, and confusion matrices, this study offers practical guidance for designing quantum classifiers that scale effectively and generalize well, providing a foundation for real-world Hybrid quantum machine learning applications.
When it comes to realizing immediate quantum advantages in practical applications like machine learning and optimization techniques, numerous methods have emerged as a frontrunner technique. Such algorithms often involve quantum circuits for data encoding and the training of Quantum Neural Networks (QNNs) to minimize target functions when applied to tasks involving classical data. Quantum Machine Learning (QML) is a promising area of quantum computing because it may effectively handle difficult learning tasks by taking advantage of the high dimensional Hilbert space to train better representations from limited data. Despite QML's rising popularity, few academic works have addressed the language's security features. There has been a lot of buzz about the promising new discipline of quantum machine learning. Training a parameterized quantum circuit is a common practice in contemporary QML for performing data analysis on classical or quantum datasets. To make accurate predictions on an independent test dataset, state-of-the-art QML techniques first variationally optimize a parameterized quantum circuit using the training dataset. Quantum modeling in QML has also been shown to offer an exponential benefit in sample complexity. In the realms of pattern recognition, machine learning, and data mining, feature dimensionality reduction as a crucial link in the process has become one hot and tough spot. Most academics have gravitated towards this topic because of the difficulty of its studies. The goal of this research is to learn how to implement low loss in the procedure of feature dimension reduction, preserve the integrity of the original data, locate the most effective mapping, and obtain the best possible low-dimensional data. Preliminary findings suggest that QML models may offer advantages over classical models for classical data analysis. In this paper, a thorough investigation into generalization performance in QML is performed. This paper presents a brief survey on Qubits Encoding using Quantum Machine Learning models that help researchers to identify the limitations of the existing models and to design new efficient models for better performance levels.
Quantum machine learning integrates quantum computing with classical machine learning techniques to enhance computational power and efficiency. A major challenge in quantum machine learning is developing robust quantum classifiers capable of accurately processing and classifying complex datasets. In this work, we present an advanced approach leveraging data re-uploading, a strategy that cyclically encodes classical data into quantum states to improve classifier performance. We examine two cost functions, fidelity and trace distance, across various quantum classifier configurations, including single-qubit, two-qubit, and entangled two-qubit systems. Additionally, we evaluate four optimization techniques (L-BFGS-B, COBYLA, Nelder-Mead, and SLSQP) to determine their effectiveness in optimizing quantum circuits for both linear and non-linear classification tasks. Our results show that the choice of optimization method significantly impacts classifier performance, with L-BFGS-B and COBYLA often yielding superior accuracy. The two-qubit entangled classifier shows improved accuracy over its non-entangled counterpart, albeit with increased computational cost. Also, the two-qubit entangled classifier is the best option for real-world random datasets in terms of accuracy and computational cost. Linear classification tasks generally exhibit more stable performance across optimization techniques compared to non-linear tasks. Our findings highlight the potential of data re-uploading in quantum machine learning, outperforming existing quantum classifier models in terms of accuracy and robustness. This work contributes to the growing field of quantum machine learning by providing a comprehensive comparison of classification strategies and optimization techniques in quantum computing environments, offering a foundation for developing more efficient and accurate quantum classifiers.
Quantum Machine Learning (QML) holds the promise of enhancing machine learning modeling in terms of both complexity and accuracy. A key challenge in this domain is the encoding of input data, which plays a pivotal role in determining the performance of QML models. In this work, we tackle a largely unaddressed aspect of encoding that is unique to QML modeling -- rather than adjusting the ansatz used for encoding, we consider adjusting how data is conveyed to the ansatz. We specifically implement QML pipelines that leverage classical data manipulation (i.e., ordering, selecting, and weighting features) as a preprocessing step, and evaluate if these aspects of encoding can have a significant impact on QML model performance, and if they can be effectively optimized to improve performance. Our experimental results, applied across a wide variety of data sets, ansatz, and circuit sizes, with a representative QML approach, demonstrate that by optimizing how features are encoded in an ansatz we can substantially and consistently improve the performance of QML models, making a compelling case for integrating these techniques in future QML applications. Finally we demonstrate the practical feasibility of this approach by running it using real quantum hardware with 100 qubit circuits and successfully achieving improved QML modeling performance in this case as well.